Four non-life insurers approved to use special reserves

• By Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporter

Four local non-life insurance companies have gained regulatory approval to use NT$4.47 billion (US$150.18 million) in special reserves to write off losses from COVID-19 insurance claims, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.

That made up about 9 percent of the total reserves of NT$48.1 billion set aside by insurers as of the end of April, the commission said.

The four are Cathay Century Insurance Co (國泰世紀產險), Chung Kuo Insurance Co (兆豐產險), Hotai Insurance Co (和泰產險) and Tokio Marine Newa Insurance Corp (新安東京海上產險), which, as of the end of last year, had risk-based capital ratios of 284 percent, 624 percent, 392 percent and 608 percent respectively.

Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times

These figures could have sunk below the regulatory threshold of 200 percent at the end of last month, warranting capital injections to improve their finances, the Insurance Bureau said.

As of Monday, COVID-19 insurance policy compensation claims had reached NT$14.93 billion, which were paid out to 423,000 policyholders, data from the commission showed.

The compensation was 3.67 times the premium of NT$4.06 billion from sales of such insurance policies, the data showed.

In particular, compensation for COVID-19 vaccine insurance policies totaled NT$2.24 billion as of Monday, compared with NT$908 million in premiums from policy sales, the data showed.